About SubSiren

SubSiren began at the turn of the millennium as a paper-copy fanzine to cover alternative and independent music based in and around the Buckinghamshire town of Aylesbury in theUnited Kingdom.

The town had been a rich haven for alternative music in the 60’s and 70’s with the success of the club Friars. It’s closure in the mid-80’s had seen this scene vanish and the town pretty much returned to a cultural dark age of has-beens and endless cover bands. Our aim was to cover the less mainstream scene which seemed to be ignored by the local media, while supporting more interesting local acts who would usually drop off the radar.

The fanzine grew popular and probably peaked around 2003. It prided itself on giving opinionated articles, honest reviews and also bagged some pretty good interviews with the likes of Graham Coxon, LCD Soundsystem and the Rapture. In its latter days the zine was also lucky to have legendary local music journalist Kris Needs on it’s book, with his insight on Johnny Thunders being an all-time highlight.

SubSiren the fanzine finished in 2005 with an aborted attempt to transfer it’s pages onto the Super-Highway (“none of us knew what we were doing”). A couple of years before it’s demise the staff had been hosting local shows under the SubSiren name and so this is how it’s continued.

SubSiren Live has graced many venues in Aylesbury; The Harrow, The Kings Head, the Multi Cultural Centre, the Ship (RIP), the Millwrights, Bucks Arms (RIP) and of course 31 Below (RIP). It more recently had an extended residency at the Hop Pole and is currently sniffing around the White Swan in the guise of ‘Home Taping is Killing Music’ nights. Acts have included Winter Gods, the Pale Blue Eyes, Treecreeper, Louis Barabbas, Sunnyvale Noise Sub-Element, Whatever Hippie Bitch, The Koolaid Electric Company, Glockenspiel, Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti, Pete, Mark Knight and the Witches, Space Heroes of the People, Simpson Brothers, 1877, the Shaker Heights, Atomic Suplex, From Light to Sound, Bootstrap, Crescendo and the Alpha Males.

Home Taping Is Killing Music is the weak vision of two Aylesbury nobodies who basically decided to pretend they were listening to music at home, in a pub. Expect lots of post rock, John Carpenter soundtrack music, kraut rock, Four Tet and no one there.